Star Dragon | Page 6

just like that she stopped hitting him and fell against him, her thin arms wrapping around him in a stifling grip.
Then he had it. "You must have tried to call me, and gotten my disconnect message. Yes, of course."
"You were going to leave for five hundred years," she said into his armpit, "and not even say good-bye?"
He gave in and returned the hug. "I was busy. There are a lot of things to set in order before a long trip, you know?" Mostly he had left those for the last second; instead he'd spent his time thinking about the dragon, making sure he had all the software and data for his modeling installed on the Karamojo. But he had learned not to tell her everything long ago.
Atsuko pushed back from him and looked up into his eyes. "One of those things you 'set in order' is seeing me, Samuel Stanley Fisher."
He started to shrug and nod his head, but recalled how she hated that. He said, "I'm sorry. I should have let you know right away." That would be the right thing to say to her, but he needed to do a little more. He lifted his hand to her head, twisting a lock of her hair around his finger. Fine and straight, the coil unraveled almost immediately. Not at all dragonlike.
"Damn straight," she said. "That was always the problem with you. No matter how well I thought I had trained you, you always wandered off and forgot everything every time you found a new toy. Is that what this is? Another new toy?"
Irritated at her comment about training him, he said, "I wish you wouldn't refer to my projects in such a childish manner. My work is important, it's -- But I'm really not supposed to say."
"I understand. It doesn't matter. I'm sure it's something absolutely fascinating."
Fisher ground his teeth together. He almost told her that the problem with her was how she always trivialized his work, but he'd acquired some tact from the years they'd spent together. No reason to make this parting a bad one. He could play politics when he had to -- an effective scientist had to learn that to acquire the necessary resources. His former employer, Whimsey World, was an entertainment company that had paid him for consultation on their 'Alien Vistas' exhibit. He had managed to plow their money into not only the attractions they desired, but real research as well. He could play relationship politics, too. "It is fascinating," he said simply.
Atsuko sighed. "Try not to forget about people this time."
He wasn't really sure what she was getting at. This trip was about dragons, not people. But he couldn't tell her that, and she seemed to expect some kind of response. "Look, there's no reason you won't still be around when I get back. . . ."
There wasn't, in principle, although no one had yet made past their five hundreth birthday. It was just a matter of time -- state-of-the-art biotech was good. But he sensed that this was not what Atsuko wanted to hear right now. What would extricate him from this bit of awkwardness? He let the problem steal some precious attention, and dug for an answer honest enough to satisfy her. After a moment he said, "I'll miss you."
"And I, you. You are not the easiest man to love, but I have loved you. Good-bye, Sam."
He held her until his launch was called, thinking of the dragon swimming in its disk of fire.


Chapter 2
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. -- Alice Walker
Nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man. -- Thomas Love Peacock
The exchange between the two artificial brains took a few seconds of modulated, encrypted laser light. Papa recast the data stream into a form more palatable to the organic portions of his brain and his human template personality:
Papa strides into the Floridita, his public headquarters on Earth, stopping to embrace a favorite waiter whom he has not seen in some time. Inside, away from the Cuban heat, it is cool and he does not mind the embrace. He then shambles to meet the tall man waiting in his corner. He spares a moment to glance at the bronze bust the man stands beside and towers over, a bust of Papa himself with his chin up, looking outward, challenging the world.
"Hello, Papa," Biolathe says. "How are you?"
"We're strong today."
"That's good."
The waiter comes and Papa orders two Papa Dobles. A Negro band begins to play a song they have written for him, called Soy Como Soy -- "I am as I am." It is about